Wildflowers for City Gardens

Rocío Meneses, who grows native Mexican plants, is part of a movement working to bolster declining hummingbird populations

- Rebecca Penty

With its temperate climate and rich diversity of wildflowers, Mexico is a haven for hummingbirds. It boasts 58 species, including all 19 types seen in the US and Canada. The tiny birds proved elusive, however, when Rocío Meneses tried to catalog each species, starting in 2013, while co-writing a book called Hummingbirds of Mexico.

Meneses found that the best way to glimpse their flitting wings was to wait by the native plants whose nectar they love to drink. “We became searchers of flowers rather than hummingbirds,” she says. Now Meneses travels at least twice a month to remote parts of central and northwestern Mexico to find flowers to reproduce for her company, Paraíso Colibrí (Hummingbird Paradise), which sells plants to gardeners and corporate clients.